Craig Chaquico started at the top. Before he was out of his
teens he had become the lead guitarist for the Jefferson Starship,
playing on the multi-platinum Red Octopus and
remaining with the band through the eighties. He left the Starship,
picked up an acoustic guitar and has become one of the most original
instrumental voices in the smooth jazz universe. Always
changing and evolving he has moved from the organic acoustic
sound of his debut, Acoustic Highway, to
the more produced smooth jazz flavor of Four Corners,
then picked up the electric guitar for the hit single, “Café Carnival” and
added yet another dimension to his music. His latest, Midnight
Noon, is his most rock influenced so far. He
is in the studio creating new music and exploring new directions
right now, including some collaborations with Rick Derringer,
another rock guitar hero who has been staking out some smooth
jazz turf.

Craig is a storyteller. In concert he sets up his songs
with tales, anecdotes and visualizations. The animation
and excitement in his voice always draw you in, so as an interviewer
you let him take center stage. As a musician he can’t
be pigeonholed into a format and to force this conversation into
a format would compromise its spirit too. There the usual
questions and answers, and there were stories. The first
story being about how he put down the accordion and picked up
a guitar (Listen
to Craig tell the story):

Craig Chaquico (CC): My mom and dad were musicians.
My dad played sax and accordion and my mom played piano and organ
so they were always playing music around the house. In the evenings
they would play music, it was so natural I thought everybody
did that. They asked me if I wanted to learn to play an instrument.
Since my dad played accordion I chose that and took two years
of accordion lessons. Peter White plays accordion and so did
Eric Clapton, so there must be some kind of weird torture element
of accordion that we all have to pay our dues by going through,
because when I was taking lessons I hated it. When I started
listening to the music on the FM stations I noticed there wasn't
a lot of accordion music on there. There was a lot of guitar
so I started gravitating towards that. I loved camping and whenever
we went camping there were a lot of acoustic guitars around the
campfire which really intrigued me too. My mom and dad knew I
was Jonesing for a guitar because I would go to friends' houses
and see if they would let me play their guitars for a while.
Finally my mom bought me this little acoustic guitar that was
on sale for 10 bucks, which I still have. They thought it would
be a phase and I would get it out of my system but I never put
the guitar down. I played it incessantly. This was when I was
10.

CC: When I was 12 my dad and
I were in a really bad car accident. We were hit by a drunk driver
and I woke up in the hospital with two broken arms, a broken
rib, broken wrist, broken thumb, broken ankle, broken foot...two
of my arms had casts, and one of my legs had a cast up to my
hip. The first thing I asked for was my little acoustic guitar.
Even though my fingers only stuck out about an inch from under
the cast I could still reach one string on the guitar. My doctor
encouraged me to play while I was in the hospital and when I
was in the wheelchair and going through therapy. The guitar was
a welcome companion. We all know that music can help you through
difficult times and it helped me. It was a great place for my
spirit to go and it was also great for my circulation while my
hands were in these casts. I ended up writing a song on one string,
the high E string, because it was the only string I could reach
with my hands in the cast. That song is on the Acoustic Planet
album. I call it "E"-
Lizabeth's song because my doctor's name was Elizabeth, and the
full title is "Center of Courage." Center of Courage
is a rehabilitation center in Minneapolis where they take people
who have been in serious accidents. They call it Center of Courage
because the recovery process is usually difficult and challenging.
I have a connection to one of the patients there. When I first
played Minneapolis the limo driver who took me to the hotel said
his friend wanted to come to the concert but he was in the hospital.
He told me his friend had been hit by a drunk driver, which is
exactly what happened to me. I told the limo driver that if he
could give me a ride and get the OK from the hospital I would
go over there after the show and do a concert for his friend.
The hospital staff found us a conference room and I set up my
guitar and played for him. When I told him the story about
the song about the eagle you could just see his eyes light up
while he was imagining the whole story behind the music. About
six months later I get this letter saying how much the music
inspired him. Having someone come in who cared enough
to give him that time and turn him on to the music got him through
the difficult times. He said when he was going through therapy
he played my music to help him stay motivated. Almost a year
to the day I go back and my concert is on the day this guy is
getting out of the hospital. I mentioned it on a radio interview
and a guy with a Harley Davidson and a sidecar called in and
said "Hey, I'll go pick him up on the bike and take him
to the concert. So this guy goes to the hospital and picks him
up. It’s the first time he has been out of the hospital
since his accident, and this guy shows up, puts him in the sidecar
and brings him to my show. Ever since then he's been an inspiration
and that's why I called the song "Center of Courage." It
was originally written in the hospital and I sort of dedicated
it to all those people who have to go through that.

When my first solo album came out I went back to the hospital
to play for the kids in the ward where I had been, just to let
them know that it may be a frightening time they are going through
but there is always light at the end of the tunnel. I broke all
those bones and I got through it and ended up playing for the
Starship and playing guitar for a living. Around that time I
found out that there is an organization called the American Music
Therapy Association where they use music in the healing process
for all sorts of situations. For instance, if someone has an
illness or injury that messes up their brain like a stroke, music
therapy can actually help them start to rewire the damaged parts
of the brain. I remember talking about this at a concert, then
after the show someone told me about his Grandmother, who had
a stroke. They told her she would never talk to us again but
a music therapist came in and started playing old songs from
when she was growing up and she started humming along with them.
Then she started remembering the words, then she started talking.
If it wasn't for the music she might not have talked again. My
favorite story is a guy who had Alzheimer’s and a music
therapist suggested to his wife that she play some music for
him that they listened to when they were dating. He heard that
music and he smiled, and then he remembered her and got up and
danced with her. That lucidity lasted longer than the song did
and it brought him back for a while. There are all sorts of stories
like that. One time I played at a hospital in Oklahoma City after
the bombing. There were a bunch of kids who still had glass embedded
in their arms and faces. When I told them the story about the
eagle and played the song you could see these kids close their
eyes, put their hands out, and pretend they were Eagles flying.

[Note:Curt Hansen, the limo driver who introduced
Craig to Lee, tells the story about Lee on Craig’s website.
To see pictures of Lee in the sidecar headed for the concert
and Craig at 12, with casts on his leg and arms and his first
guitar in his hands go here: www.craigchaquico.com/html/lee_sidecars.shtml]

Then it was time for the obvious question:

SV (SmoothViews):How
did you end up joining the Jefferson Starship?CC: By the time I was 14 I had a garage band.
My English teacher heard us play and he invited me to play
lead guitar in his band. I ended up in this band with a group
of guys who were 15 years older than me. I had to wear this
fake mustache and lie about my age because you had to be 21
to play in clubs. My English teacher knew Paul Kantner and
Grace Slick from the Airplane. They would come to some of the
shows. They even recorded a song he wrote, it was on the Sunfighter album
and I played on the track. That was the first album I recorded
with them. I was 16. Every year after that I would get asked
back to play more and more parts on their albums. Over the
next few years I was on three studio albums with Paul and Grace,
and the band I was in got a deal where we opened and toured
with them. My band, Steel Wind, opened then I would come back
out and play with the Starship too. After the tour I was going
to go back to college, but Grace invited me to come to San
Francisco and record an album with them. The album went gold.
The next album was Red Octopus, which
went quadruple platinum. I was on every album from 1974-1990.

SV:How did you get good enough to get
to that level at such an early age. Especially since you were in a cast for
a year? Are you totally self taught?CC: I'm self taught. I used to take albums and put the needle
down on a part over and over again until I learned how to play it. When I first
heard Duane Allman I didn't even know he was playing with a slide. I learned
to play slide licks with a finger because I figured that was what he was using.
I was just this kid in my bedroom playing along with these records.

SV:You must have totally
shredded your fingers!CC: My Mom always reminds me that I used to
play until my fingers bled. All I did was play guitar. That's
all I wanted to do from sunup to sundown. I'd go to school
and the first thing I did when I came home was pick up my guitar.

SV:Then you started
getting to play around older musicians who were really good...CC: I learned a lot from the guys in Steel
Wind, and from doing sessions with Grace and Paul Kantner and
that group of musicians. There were a couple of songs where
I was playing rhythm guitar and Jerry Garcia was going to come
in and do the guitar solos later. I played a solo over the
basic track on one song just for fun. I figured we could just
erase it when Jerry came in. Jerry came in the next day and
did the solos for several songs. When he heard the track with
the solo I did he said "That's a great solo. Why don't
you let the kid have the solo?" Being around all those
musicians was like getting thrown into the deep end. There
were so many different songwriters, musicians, and styles that
I had to wear a lot of different hats. I had to go from playing
on a ballad like "Miracles" to a rock song like "Ride
The Tiger."

By 1990 everybody everyone was leaving the band. There were
more than 17 different musicians in the Starship during the time
that I was there. For most of it there was a core group with
some different people coming in to play just to change the energy,
but towards the end everything was starting to be done in the
studio on computers and the only people who would actually be
in the studio would be me and the singers. I felt like it wasn't
a band anymore and I wanted to do something different. The first
thing I tried was a rock project called Big Bad Wolf that actually
ended up being released in Japan. Then my wife got pregnant and
during the pregnancy it seemed like the acoustic guitar would
be more welcome around the house than the loud electric so I
started playing acoustic. Little did I know that it would lead
to a whole new direction and winning awards and that kind of
stuff. It was kind of a lucky change of style.

SV:Were you playing much
acoustic before that?CC: Not really. There were a few acoustic
songs though. I played an acoustic 12-string on "Find
Your Way Back" and "Count on Me" was acoustic.

SV: When you started playing
acoustic did your writing process change?CC: It did because I was writing instrumentals
and there weren't any lyrics to get in the way. In the band
the singer told the story and the lead guitar would have a
part in the middle where I could tell the story in the language
of music. It did change the way I wrote because the song had
to have an emotion that was defined enough that it could keep
your interest. If it was a romantic song if the lyrics were
romantic I would reflect the feeling with a melodic solo. If
it was a rowdy song the guitar would reflect what the singer
was singing about. As an instrumental artist I didn't have
to wait for the singers to get done. I could tell the whole
story on guitar. I wanted to create musical stories that did
have a beginning, middle and end, so you felt like you were
going on a musical journey. I like to tell "Theatre of
the Mind" type stories to go with the songs. They are
kind of like guided imagery because it makes it a little more
interesting for the audience to know the story that goes with
the song, then they can use their own imaginations to fill
in their own feelings and memories. It's interesting to see
people who don't speak English when they hear the music. Even
when people can't understand the language when I tell the story
you see them respond. If it's a romantic song they'll hold
hands, if it's a rock song you'll see them playing air guitar.

SV:You have spoken about
how instrumental music gives the listeners a chance to use
their imaginations to fill in the spaces, but in most cases
you give people an indication of what the song is about.
Do you think this may close some spaces that people might
fill in, that they might have a totally different personal
interpretation of the song if they didn’t have the
story you told as a reference point?CC: That’s a possibility. On one hand
it might limit it but I think it makes it more interesting
that they have a place to go instead of just sitting there
hearing another song. I know artists who don't want to explain
anything about their paintings, their music, or whatever they
create. They want to let every door be open to let the viewer
interpret on their own. What I try to do is at least nudge
them in a direction because if I tell a story, say about the
outdoors or an eagle, everyone has a different picture in their
mind from that or if it's a love song they will think of times
when they have been in love. It still opens some personal creative
doors for people. Hopefully there’s a connection because
even though the stories I tell are my experiences they are
universal experiences too and people will add their story to
it. So it's not just a song that I'm playing onstage, it's
a song about their life. That's what I hope to do. For me it
goes back to when I was in third grade and we had this music
teacher who would play symphonies for us that had themes to
them, things that had different characters and stories and
different instruments represented different elements of the
story. She would have us close our eyes and put our heads down
on the desk while she played the music and told the story behind
it. She had us visualizing the story while we listened. As
different things happened in the music you could imagine them.
She played things like "Peter and the Wolf" and "William
Tell Overture" which I always saw as the Lone Ranger no
matter what. I loved that, it really influenced me and that
is what I try to do for people who hear my music.

SV:One of the things
I love about the stories you attach to your songs is most
of the imagery connected with this type of music has narrowed
into being about big city nightlife, sophistication, and
seduction. Your songs are about open spaces and nature, and
your romantic songs are more authentic. It's so much fun
when you take us on a camping trip during an indoor concert
too.CC: That’s one of the most fun things.
When it all happens right and the lights go down the fire is
on and the stars come out, people are transported to the desert
because they just heard the story about sitting around the
campfire with a bunch of Indians under the milky way and now
they are sitting around the campfire with a tribe of people
under the stars too, even if they are indoors and dressed up.
That’s one of my favorite parts of the night.

SV:You've been doing
this for 15 years now and most of your songs are originals.
How do you keep it fresh?CC: With every album I try to put the elements
that I hope for in a good book or a good movie. A good book
will have scenery and a location, that’s the instrumentation.
There will be a love scene; I always put a love song on the
albums. There will be action scenes and uplifting scenes; I
put songs in there that set those moods too. Those are the
things I try to do, with each album having at least a slightly
different theme. Like kids in the same family who look similar
but each have their own personality, that’s what I try
to do with my albums. The process we are going through now
with the album we're working on is that we are trying to find
songs that are comfortable, that have some connection with
the other songs but have some twist, some different element.
One different element will be that I am working with Rick Derringer.
We're going to collaborate on some songs for this album.

SV: Your first few albums were mostly acoustic and
more organically produced. then you went through a phase
of using the LA session guys and more loops and effects.
Was that an evolution that you wanted to do to stretch out
your style, or was it something you felt like you had to
do to fit your music into a format.CC: A little bit of all of that. I really
try to listen and be open to ideas from the people I work with,
the record label people, concert promoters, and managers. I
can’t agree with everybody all the time but I do try
to see if there is something there that is inspiring. I did
go in some different directions with those albums. Sometimes
it was based on the awareness that there is this trend on radio
and that a group of artists are having success at that level.
There was the other element out there with these more produced
things. For me it was musicians I knew and enjoyed playing
with anyway, so it was pretty organic in that sense. I don’t
like it when a song sounds like somebody just hit a button
and the loop plays through the whole song. I like the sound
of live musicians and the dynamics that brings. But I do like
songs that have rhythm and a groove. At the end of the day
you should just please yourself. I think anything else is cheating
the public. You can try new ideas but if you don’t like
it yourself how can you expect anyone else to like it.

SV:You kind of wrapped
up that phase when you released “Café Carnival,” which
was guitar based, had a live sound and a lot of energy, and
went to #1 and stayed there for quite a while.CC: It did break all the rules, it even had
an electric guitar solo. It was a bonus track on a Panorama,
which was a “best of” CD and bonus tracks don’t
usually do anything on the charts. We were so happy to see
something a little bit different do so well.

SV: After that it seems like you started to use
more electric guitars. Therewas
some on Shadow and Light and you
really brought them out onMidnight
Noon.CC: There was some electric
guitar on the early albums. It was just really deep in
the mix. “Café Carnival” really brought
it out. Some of that was from the interaction when we were
playing live, especially when I was doing the Guitars and Saxes
tours. People really enjoyed it and I love playing electric. Midnight
Noon was kind of out of the box, more of a departure
from my usual stuff. There was a lot of inspiration from people
like Hendrix and the Allman Brothers. I really did a lot of
electric guitar and it was almost retro sounding.

SV: New music for people who grew up with
rock, still love it and want tohear
new music that has that vibe! “Jazz Noon” reminds
me of Tom Petty’s“Breakdown.”CC: We wanted to create the feeling of an
after midnight jam with that one. “Jazz Noon” is
midnight for jazz musicians because when you’re playing
in clubs midnight is the middle of your work day. So we wanted
to create that atmosphere, when it’s late at night at
a club and the crowd has thinned out or gone home and the musicians
are hanging out and just jamming.

SV: You used multiple guitars, especially
on the last two CDs.CC: I thought it would be cool to do different
guitars for different parts. When I record I do play several
different parts on different tracks. I wanted to use the different
guitars to bring out different textures and tones. Besides,
I taught my son how to tune and change strings for a slight
fee, (laughs). It made it possible to have all these guitars
lined up so I can feel like a painter and each guitar is a
color on the palette. When I want a certain color for a certain
part of the song I can just reach over and grab the guitar
just like reaching over and taking your paintbrush and dabbing
it in a color and putting that on a painting.

SV: How do you decide which guitars and which sounds
go where?CC: It’s mix and match. You dabble and
experiment and something will come to mind, then you try it.
Like on “Girls Night Out” I wanted each guitar
to have a different sound to represent a group of women on
a night on the town and the different guitars were their different
personalities as the night went on. That was a lot of fun to
do. And there is the aspect that when you pick up a certain
guitar it is going to influence how you play it because certain
guitars have a certain personality themselves. Like if you
pick up a Stratocaster you’re going to play more like
Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughn, if you pick up a Les Paul you’re
gonna sound a little more like Duane Allman. The guitar itself
kind of leads you in a direction. What I will do sometimes
is play the song all the way through on several guitars and
listen back and listen to different parts that I like from
each track and see which ones speak the best.

SV: So what happens if you have three or four different
things and you like themall? In
the liner notes about that song you mentioned the characters
fromSex and the City so to ask a Carrie
Bradshaw type question: Do you moveinto
the realm of too many choices? CC: That does happen with the technology and
so many different tracks you can use. I actually kinda fell
into that Pandora’s box on a song from Shadow
and Light. I played the main melody on
three different guitars and I couldn’t decide which one
I liked the best so I spent all this time in the studio blending
the sounds to make one guitar sound. The way it came out nobody
would ever notice the difference between the blend and what
I could have done by just using one guitar and sticking with
that.

SV: You’ve been collaborating
with Ozzie Ahlers since Acoustic Highway.
How did you hook up with him?CC: I’ve known him for years. He was
in another band called The Edge and a lot of band members from
the Bay Area would be in the clubs and go see them. He was
playing a lot in the area so he was well known. When I first
started on my rock project I asked him if he wanted to help
on some keyboards. He was working on a film where Joe Satriani
was supposed to play the guitar parts but something came up
and he couldn’t do it so Ozzie asked me to do it. We
actually ended up working together on a “Gumby” movie
that ended up being a really popular kids video in around 1991.
Then we worked on a project that we thought would be a song
for the Olympics and it ended up being used for a film for
the Air Force Thunderbirds, their flight demonstration team.
Then while I was working on the rock project the idea came
to both of us to do some more instrumental stuff. We went into
my studio and started working on it. The first ones were mostly
just him and me.

SV: How do you account for the longevity of this
partnership?CC: We’ve both been in a lot of different
bands. There’s a chemistry that is either there or it
isn’t. Sometimes you have to work at it and be patient
with each other. I know he has to be patient with me and some
of my idiosyncrasies. It’s like opposites attract. If
I was making these records with another guitar player it would
be like two guys in a boat with the oars on the same side of
the boat and we’re going around in circles. With someone
like Ozzie it’s like we’ve got our oars on the
opposite sides so we make some progress because we compliment
each other. Respecting each other’s differences and being
open to each others’ suggestions is what makes it work.
We’ve
had a really long run. We really have fun playing together
and we’re surrounded by great guys in the band. We really
do enjoy each other and we love hanging out together on the
road.

SV: You’ve mostly kept the same band and had
an ongoing musicalrelationship
with this group of people since the beginning.CC: From the beginning it was Ozzie and me.
Then Wade (Olson-drums) and Jim (Reitzel-bass) came in. Then
Jim introduced me to Kevin (Palladini-sax). Jim and Kevin were
in a band in the Bay Area together. He came to a rehearsal
and the chemistry was instant so he joined the band. Marquinho
(Brasil) has been doing most of the percussion lately and Ray
Yslas plays too. I think we’ve just kept this lineup
because we get along so well.

SV: And you’ve been on Higher Octave since
Acoustic Highway. There havebeen
a lot of upheavals and changes with labels coming and going
and mostartists have had to switch labels
or start their own. Can you account for thator
is it just a blessing?CC: It’s really been a blessing. I wish
I could take some of the credit for it but I think it’s
been a blessing. I think somebody up there must like me!